The Making of Arguments

by J. H. Gardiner

Of the factors which make for the persuasiveness of an argument I will speak here of three—clearness of statement, appeal to the practical interests of the audience, and direct appeal to their feelings.

There can be no doubt that clearness of statement is a powerful element in making an argument persuasive, though the appeal that it makes to the feelings of the readers is slight and subtle. In practice we mostly read arguments either to help make up our minds on a subject or to get aid in defending views for which we have no ready support. In the latter case we do not need to be persuaded; but in the former there can be no question that an argument which clears up the subject, and makes it intelligible where before it was confusing, does have an effect on us over and above its aid to our thought.

56. The Practical Interests of the Audience. Of directly persuasive power, however, are the other two factors—the appeal to the practical interests of readers, and the appeal to their emotions. Of these the appeal to practical interests has no proper place in arguments on questions of fact, but a large and entirely proper share in most arguments of policy. Henry Ward Beecher's speech on the slavery issue in the Civil War, before the cotton operatives of Liverpool,[⁶⁰][!--Note--] is a classic example of the direct appeal to the practical interests of an audience. They were bitterly hostile to the North, because the supplies of cotton had been cut off by the blockade; and after he had got a hearing from them by appealing to the English sense of fair play, he drove home the doctrine that a slave population made few customers for the products of English mills. Then he passed on to the moral side of the question.

Arguments on almost all public questions—direct election of senators, direct primaries, commission form of government, tariff, currency, control of corporations, or, in local matters, the size of a school committee, the granting of franchises to street railroads or water companies, the laying out of streets, the rules governing parks—are all questions of policy in which the greatest practical advantage to the greatest proportion of those who are interested is the controlling force in the decision. At particular times and places moral questions may enter into some of these questions, but ordinarily we come to them to settle questions of practical advantage.

In arguments on all such questions, therefore, the direct appeal to the practical interests of the people you are addressing is the chief factor that makes for persuasiveness. Will a change to a commission form of government make towards a reduction of taxes and towards giving greater and more equitably distributed returns for those that are levied? Will the direct primary for state officers make it easier and surer for the average citizen of the state to elect to office the kind of men he wants to have in office? Will a central bank of issue, or some institution like it, establish the business of the country on a basis less likely to be disturbed by panics? Will a competing street-car line make for better and cheaper transportation in the city? In all such questions the only grounds for decision are practical, and founded in the prosperity and the convenience of the people who have the decision.

To make arguments in such cases persuasive you must show how the question affects the practical interests of your readers, and then that the plan which you support will bring them the greatest advantage. Generalities and large political truths may help you to convince them; but to persuade them to active interest and action you must get down to the realities which touch them personally. If you are arguing for a commission government in your city on the ground of economy, show in dollars and cents what portion of his income the owner of a house and lot worth five or ten thousand dollars pays each year because of the present extravagance and wastefulness. If you can make a voter see that the change is likely to save him ten or twenty-five or a hundred dollars a year, you have made an argument that is persuasive. The arguments for the reformation of our currency system are aimed directly at the material interests of the business men of the country and their employees; and the pleas for one or another system attempt to show how each will conduce to the greater security and profit of the greatest number of people.

To make such arguments count, however, you must deal in concrete terms. A recent argument[⁶¹][!--Note--] for the establishment of a general parcels post in this country presents figures to show that for the transportation of a parcel by express at a rate of forty-five cents, the railroad gets twenty-two and one-half cents for service which it could do at a handsome profit for five cents. Of the validity of these figures I have no means of judging; but the effectiveness of the argument lies in its making plain to each of its readers a fact which touches his pocket every time he sends a parcel by express. It is this kind of argument that has persuasiveness, for the way we spend our money and what we get for it come close home to most of us. Of all practical interests those of the purse are of necessity the most moving for all but the very rich.

Money interests, however, are far from being the only practical interests which concern us: there are many matters of convenience and comfort where an individual or a community is not thinking of the cost. Such questions as what kind of furnace to set up, whether to build a house of brick or of cement, which railroad to take between, two cities, are questions that draw arguments from other people than advertising agents. Of another sort are questions that concern education. What college shall a boy go to; shall he be prepared in a public school, or a private day school, or a boarding school? Shall a given college admit on certificate, or demand an examination of its own? Shall a certain public school drop Greek from its list of studies; shall it set up a course in manual training? All these are examples of another set of questions that touch practical interests very closely. In arguments on such questions, therefore, if you are to have the power of persuading and so of influencing action, you must get home to the interests of the people you are trying to move. The question of schools is very different for a boy in a small country village and for one in New York City; the question of admission is different for a state university and for an endowed college; the question of Greek is different for a school which sends few pupils on to college and for one which sends many: and in each case if you want to influence action, you must set forth facts which bear on the problem as it faces that particular audience. Except perhaps for the highest eloquence, there is no such thing as universal persuasiveness. The questions which actively affect the average man usually concern small groups of people, and each group must be stirred to action by incentives adapted to its special interests.

57. The Appeal to Moral Interests. Still further from the interests that touch the pocket, and constantly in healthy and elevating action against them, are the moral interests. The appeal to moral motives is sometimes laughed at by men who call themselves practical, but in America it is in the long run the strongest appeal that can be made. We are still near enough to the men who fought through the Civil War, in which each, side held passionately to what it believed to be the moral right, for us to believe without too much complacency that moral forces are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great, though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any question on which you have to argue has a moral side, it is not only your duty, but it is also the path of expediency, to make appeal through the moral principle involved.

The chief difficulty with making an appeal to moral principles is to set them forth in other than abstract terms, since they are the product of a set of feelings which lie too deep for easy phrasing in definite words. In most cases we know what is right long before we can explain why it is right; and a man who can put into clear words the moral forces that move his fellows is a prophet and leader of men. Moreover, it must be remembered when one is appealing to moral principles that upright men are not agreed about all of them, and there is even more doubt and disagreement when one comes to the practical application of the principles. We have seen in Chapter I what bitter division arose in our fathers' time over the right and the righteousness of slavery; and how in many states to-day good and God-fearing people are divided on the question of prohibition.